Marquez and Pedrosa Look Forward to Aragón in Fine Form

[totalmotorcycle]

@Marquez and @Pedrosa Look Forward to @Aragón in Fine Form


Spaniards Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda RC213V) and Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC213V) contest this weekend’s Aragón Grand Prix as the main men on the MotoGP grid.

Marquez goes into the event leading the World Championship with five races to go. Pedrosa arrives at the track full of confidence after winning his first race of the year at Misano two weekends ago.

The pair’s successes put the Repsol Honda Team ahead in the Teams World Championship, while victories from independent Honda team riders Cal Crutchlow (LCR Honda RC213V) and Jack Miller (EG 0,0 Marc VDS Honda RC213V) have helped put Honda ahead of the Constructors’ World Championships. Thus Honda is chasing MotoGP’s triple crown.

The battle for the 2016 MotoGP Riders World Championship is Marquez’s number-one concern for the next seven weeks as he fights to maintain his series lead, which he has held since June’s Catalan Grand Prix. The 23-year-old former 125cc and Moto2 World Champion, who won the MotoGP crown in 2013 and 2014, has ridden a superb 2016 season aboard his Repsol RC213V: not only is he leading the premier championship, he is also the only rider across all three categories to have scored points in all 13 races so far.

His results – including three victories, three second-place finishes and three third places – show the youngster’s mature mentality; to race for podium finishes when possible and otherwise to make sure of strong point-scoring finishes; as at the last two races at Silverstone and Misano, where he took two hard-fought fourth-place results.

Marquez has enjoyed victory at Aragón, just as he has enjoyed success at pretty much every MotoGP track. He won the Aragón MotoGP race in 2013 and the Moto2 race in 2011.

Pedrosa’s storming victory at Misano – where he came from eighth on the grid and sixth on the first lap to hunt down and pass the leaders – came at a vital moment for the 30-year-old. The former 125cc and double 250cc World Champion had had some challenging races earlier in the season, especially when cold track temperatures made it difficult for the 51 kilo rider to work heat into the new-for-2016 Michelin tires.

Misano was hot and sunny, so Pedrosa had no trouble finding the grip he needed. At the same time a new Michelin front slick, with a stiffer-casing, better suited his riding technique, although he won’t know if that tire will be available this weekend until the tire allocation is announced.

Pedrosa has also stood on the top step of the podium at Aragón: he won the 2012 MotoGP race at the track and finished second in 2010, 2011 and last year. His Misano success continued his record of achieving at least one victory per season since he graduated to the MotoGP class with Repsol Honda in 2006. His 11-year stay with the factory-backed team is an all-time record in premier-class history.

Despite earlier issues, Pedrosa has maintained an impressive consistency this year to hold fourth overall in the points standings.

Both Repsol Honda riders remained at Misano for a one-day private test where they continued honing the set-up of their RCVs and had a first taste of the 2017 engine evolution.

Honda’s top independent-team rider Crutchlow has had a mostly amazing run of results in recent weeks: last month the Briton won his first MotoGP race at Brno and he also scored second-place finishes at July’s German GP and at the British GP earlier this month. He wasn’t so lucky at Misano, where a dislodged sweatband caused sweat to spray onto his visor, blurring his vision and consigning him to a seventh-place result. Crutchlow already has podium form at Aragon – he finished third in the rain-affected 2014 race.

Team-mate Jack Miller (EG 0,0 Marc VDS Honda RC213V) won’t ride at Aragón this weekend, due to ongoing problems with the right wrist he fractured in a high-speed crash during the warm-up session for last month’s Austrian GP at the Red Bull Ring. His place on his EG 0,0 Marc VDS Honda RC213V
will be taken by veteran former MotoGP rider and 2006 MotoGP World Champion Nicky Hayden, who this year contests the World Superbike series for the Ten Kate Honda team.

Hayden comes to Aragón fresh from a top-three finish in last weekend’s German WSB round, his second consecutive podium result. At Sepang in May the 35-year-old American became one of the select group of riders to have won races in both MotoGP and World Superbike. Hayden scored a podium finish at the inaugural Aragon MotoGP event in 2010.

This year’s sole MotoGP rookie Tito Rabat (EG 0,0 Marc VDS Honda RC213V) aims to get back into the points at Aragón, after a tumble at Misano ended a confidence-boosting run of three points-scoring results at the Red Bull Ring, Brno and Silverstone. The 2014 Moto2 World Champion was another who stayed on at Misano to conduct a one-day test.

This weekend’s Aragón Moto2 round is something of a home event for the Honda-powered independent class because the identically prepared CBR600 engines used by all Moto2 riders are painstakingly prepared by ExternPro in Aragón MotorLand’s TechnoPark.

The contest for this year’s Moto2 World Championship has been transformed in recent weeks. Following last month’s Austrian GP, where reigning champion Johann Zarco (Ajo Motorsport Kalex) scored his fourth win from five races to extend his title lead over Alex Rins (Paginas Amarillas HP 40 Kalex) to 34 points, Zarco has been beaten by Rins at the last three races. Zarco still leads, but his advantage has been drastically cut, to just three points.

Rins is in the ascendance and will be looking for some home-crowd support at Aragón, where he finished second last year, less than a tenth of a second behind winner Rabat. The two Spaniards were joined on that podium by Sam Lowes (Federal Oil Gresini Moto2 Kalex), whose Misano tumble (his third DNF in five races) lost him third place in the 2016 title chase to Thomas Luthi (Garage Plus Interwetten Kalex), winner in Qatar and Britain.

Just three points separate fifth-placed Jonas Folger (Dynavolt Intact GP Kalex), winner at Brno last month, from seventh-placed Takaaki Nakagami (Idemitsu Honda Team Asia Kalex), winner at Assen in June. Squeezed between them is young Italian Franco Morbidelli (Estrella Galicia 0.0 Marc VDS Kalex) who has impressed with his consistency this season.

Fellow Italian youngster Lorenzo Baldassarri (Forward Team Kalex) won his first Grand Prix victory at Misano to move up to ninth overall, just 11 points behind Hafizh Syahrin (Petronas Raceline Malaysia Kalex). The 19-year-old is the seventh different rider to win a Moto2 race this year and aims to build on his maiden success at Aragón.

Another Italian teenager, Enea Bastianini (Gresini Racing Moto3 Honda NSF250RW), came within 0.262 seconds of his first Moto3 win of the year at Misano, giving him a real confidence boost for Aragón. Bastianini’s Misano second place also moved him into second position in the Moto3 World Championship chase, just ahead of Spaniard Jorge Navarro (Estrella Galicia 0,0 Honda NSF250RW), who will be hoping that another event in Spain will set his season back on track after a difficult run of races.

Three more Honda riders occupy the top ten in the Moto3 series: superb rookie Fabio Di Giannantonio (Gresini Racing Moto3 Honda NSF250RW) in seventh, Jakub Kornfeil (Drive M7 SIC Racing Team Honda NSF250RW) in ninth and Niccolo Antonelli (Ongetta-Rivacold Honda NSF250RW) in tenth.

Aragón MotorLand is one of the more recent venues to join the MotoGP World Championship. Designed by famed racetrack engineer Hermann Tilke, the circuit layout makes excellent use of the local topography. The first part of the lap has riders climbing a hill and then descending dramatically through a downhill right/left chicane, rather like Laguna Seca’s renowned Corkscrew section, but in reverse. The main straight that precedes the final two corners – in fact two right-handers that become one – is half a kilometer long. Aragón hosted its first MotoGP round in 2010.

This weekend’s event is the last of 11 consecutive European races before the MotoGP circus packs up and heads east for the Japanese, Australian and Malaysian GPs on consecutive weekends during October. The championship returns to Europe and to Spain for the season finale at Valencia on November 13.





Honda MotoGP rider quotes

Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda:
“Aragón is a circuit that I like more than Misano, and I think it suits my riding style better. That said, it’s also true that a particularity of this year is that things may change a lot from race to race, so we’ll see if we’re able to manage things well and if we can have a good weekend. We’ll approach the race ready to adapt to the situation we encounter, but of course we’ll try to fight for the podium again in front of my home crowd and my fan club.”

Dani Pedrosa, Repsol Honda:
“Of course we’ll arrive at Aragón in a good mood, as things that had already started getting better a couple of races earlier went perfectly at Misano, and we were able to achieve a great result. Anyway, it’s important that we keep our feet on the ground, as the races are very close and hard-fought this year. We must remain totally focused on our job and on our goals, which are to continue building on the base setup we’ve been working on lately and to find the pace to stay at the front. My fan club will be here and I’ll try my best to put on a good show for the fans.”

Cal Crutchlow, LCR Honda:
“I like Aragon. We’ve had some good results there in the past, so we will see if we can do that again when we get there this time. I think without the problem I had at Misano with the sweatband in my helmet, which didn’t stop the sweat getting into my eyes, I could have been 0.4s faster over a lap, which would have put me in fifth in the race – a good result. Over the weekend, we thought we made some improvements. In practice the wheelie issue was better than last year. Hopefully we can carry that potential into the next race.”

Tito Rabat, EG 0,0 Marc VDS:
“At Misano I made another small improvement, even if that wasn’t reflected in the results, but now we head to my home Grand Prix at Aragon. The Aragon track is one that I like and one at which I’ve enjoyed some success in the past, but this will be my first time there on a MotoGP bike so we have some work to do in practice. I’m motivated and I feel strong, so we will see how it goes.”

Nicky Hayden, EG 0,0 Marc VDS:
“First of all I want to wish Jack a speedy recovery. He is a buddy of mine and he is a rider I believe in a lot, so I hope he can get healthy as quickly as possible to show the high potential we all know he has got. He just needs to get his body right so he can perform. This is an unusual experience for me because I’ve never been a stand-in rider before. But I have a good relationship with Honda and when the idea first came up they were behind it and Ten Kate gave me their blessing, so it is nice to go and help out another Honda team. For me it just a chance to go and have fun. I’d probably be riding motorbikes anyway and I would definitely be watching the race on TV, so I might as well show up and have some fun. I know MotoGP is not a place that’s always easy to have fun because the level is so high but I’ve got a lot to learn and it won’t be a walk in the park. I haven’t ridden the bike and there are different tires and electronics but I’ve got a lot of experience and I get another shot at MotoGP, which is great for me personally. I want to thank Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS for the opportunity and Ten Kate and my sponsors who all made it happen and I will try and do them all proud.”



Moto2 rider quotes

Johann Zarco, Ajo Motorsport:
“We come into this round as leaders of the World Championship and are taking it as just another race. We are focused on having a good showing in practice from Friday, in order to have the best possible race. Our strategy does not change, but there will obviously be more pressure and we have to work even harder to handle it. I like the MotorLand Aragon circuit. It’s fast, with very interesting corners, and the wind tends to play an important role. Last year did not go as expected there: it was my first chance to take the title and I was not as fast as I wanted, but I learned from it. However, in 125cc in 2011 and in Moto2 in 2014 I got on the podium there, so it’s a circuit that is good for me. We hope to fight for the win.”

Alex Rins, Paginas Amarillas HP 40:
“Now I am just three points behind Zarco in the championship. It’s nothing! We had a good race in Misano but I was very tired at the end. I’m sure I will have recovered more when we arrive in Aragon. It’s my home race. I like the track and had a good result there last year. I’m happy for the championship and we’re looking forward to the next race. We need to be really concentrated all weekend and we will try to fight again.”

Thomas Luthi, Garage Plus Interwetten:
“My goal is clearly to be inside the top three at the end of this year’s championship. But I’m not yet calculating these things. I take one race after another, always working together with the team in search of more podiums and more wins. As for the final points situation, we will speak on Sunday evening at Valencia!”



Honda Moto3 rider quotes

Enea Bastianini, Gresini Racing Moto3:
“Aragon is a track I’ve always liked a lot and last year we were very competitive: after starting from pole position, I was fighting for the win on the final lap, when unfortunately I made a mistake – I touched Binder and crashing. This year we will try to be fast right from the start of the weekend, as is happening lately, in order to work well and get prepared for the race. Binder has a great advantage in the points standings, but we still try to attack and we won’t give up while the math keeps us in the game!”

Jorge Navarro, Estrella Galicia 0,0:
“I have spent the days between the San Marino GP and the trip to MotorLand Aragon resting and recovering. I am very keen, because this round is at one of my favorite circuits on the World Championship calendar and because I have a great memory from last season, when I took my first World Championship podium. I hope to also have a great weekend this year, surrounded by friends, family and fans. In the last few races we have not been rewarded for the good work we have done throughout the weekend, so I hope that at Aragon things are different and we get a great result.”

Fabio Di Giannantonio, Gresini Racing Moto3:
“Honestly I was expecting to get a better result at Misano, although all in all we again hit the target to enter the top ten. Aragon is a track that I quite like and I know very well, having raced there for two seasons in the MotoGP Rookies Cup. Therefore we head to Spain ready to have fun and to do our best to get a good result!”